Mandalay Bay: Horror of Las Vegas shooting lingers a week later

One week to the minute after shooting started, casinos along the Las Vegas Strip went dark in honor of the 58 victims of the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.
Alden Woods/The Republic

The experience at the casino resort is at once familiar, but not familiar at all

A view from a guest room at the Mandalay Bay on Oct. 8, 2017, one week after a man shot concertgoers across Las Vegas Boulevard from his 32nd-floor suite.(Photo: Alden Woods/The Republic)

LAS VEGAS — There are no memorials here. Nothing would let you know that the golden building you’ve entered is no longer just a tropical Vegas resort at the end of Strip. The only reminder of what happened here one week ago is the message on screens all across Mandalay Bay.

We’ve been there for you during the good times, it reads, a silhouette of the Vegas skyline in the background. Thank you for being there for us now.

The message is everywhere. It’s on the giant sign overlooking the Strip. It flashes over Resortists – Mandalay Bay does not call them guests – as they ride escalators into the casino. It reflects on the glass of slot machines.

But it doesn’t try to define the times in which Mandalay Bay finds itself now, a week after one of the deadliest mass shootings. A sort of institutional knowledge has already started to form, a silent agreement to try and move on: We won’t mention it if you won’t.

“It’s kind of eerie,” Fred Burger said as he sat down to play the slots. His wife was somewhere across the 130,000-foot casino floor, playing blackjack.

The Burgers watched news of the shooting from their Delaware home and considered canceling the trip they had planned months ago. But they were supposed to meet friends from New York here, so they came anyway and checked into the Luxor.

“When we first got here, we were all real somber,” he said. Their room faces Mandalay Bay. If Burger leans against the glass, he can see the boarded-up window. They keep the curtains closed.

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Visitors from Colorado, England and Missouri talk about the mood on the Las Vegas Strip after the Oct. 1, 2017, mass shooting. Tom Tingle/azcentral.com

But they like the casino at the Mandalay, and so they walked down the Strip and joined the hundreds of people trying to navigate a Sunday afternoon in Vegas, one week later.

Most people gambled their day away in silence. The loudest sounds came from the speaker that pumped in mid-2010s pop music and the occasional group groans from the sports book. Any burst of sound sparked alarm , turning dozens of heads: A group of middle-aged women hit “1,000” on a Wheel of Fortune machine and squealed with drunken delight, then hurried to quiet themselves when they noticed the entire wing of the casino watching.

Dozens of security cameras captured it all, and uniformed guards roamed the building, searching for any danger that once had been missed.

One guard walked by, and another followed a minute later. They stood in front of bays of elevators, checking room keys and turning away anybody who didn’t have one. One man in a too-large suit trailed a German Shepherd wearing shoes and a black vest. “Explosive K-9,” the vest said.

Another guard waited on the 32nd floor, where the shooter barricaded himself and his arsenal into Room 32135. The elevators still stopped there, but the guard turned away would-be gawkers.

Mandalay Bay’s management has not announced what will become of the $500-a-night suite but dropped its asking price for rooms throughout the resort.

One week to the minute after shooting started, casinos along the Las Vegas Strip went dark in honor of the 58 victims of the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.(Photo: Alden Woods/The Republic)

So there’s still a line to check in at the lobby, right by the giant statue of Michael Jackson. The clerk behind the counter still tries her best to smile, to remind you that eight days ago this was a place of comfort and luxury. As new Resortists, you leave a credit card for incidentals and head up the tower, showing a room key to the security guard that eyes you and your bag.

In the elevator, a camera stares from a corner. You reach your floor, skipping over No. 32, and walk out onto carpet that has no pattern, down the hallway toward your room, which opens at the touch of a key card.

The thick door opens. Outside, the floor-to-ceiling windows reflect bright gold, but in your room they cast everything in a pale green. Turning on the TV, a man's deep voice tells you, "Strength is what we all are today."

You drop a bag on the bed and move toward the windows, inching closer, closer, until all of the Strip opens itself to you, lights starting to come on in the darkness.

Most of those lights would be dimmed later Sunday night, as casinos and businesses went dark exactly one week after that man killed those people.

The stage for the Route 91 Harvest Festival still stands below you, draped in black curtains that flap in the wind. Yellow crime-scene tape surrounds the block. People walk around the edges, avoiding the patches of artificial turf where 22,000 people once stood for a country music concert and 58 of them were killed.

Pressing against the cold glass, you hear the wind fight through the cracks. The Strip keeps moving because the Strip always keeps moving, and to your left you notice a gold-painted board a few floors up, covering a broken window in Room 32135.

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The mass shooting in Las Vegas left 58 people dead and 489 wounded. Here are the names and photos of the people who lost their lives.
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